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Monday, 21 May 2012

Romania Bulls Head Forgeries

In the last Blog post I showed what I believe is a genuine Bulls Head (of course, I need to get a Certificate and hope to do so). The price of getting this stamp was that I had to buy the forgeries shown above.

The two forgeries of the 54 Parale are not really serious: for example,the "4" in "54" is closed. It should be open. That is like a Big Mistake.

The 81 Parale in the top row is trying harder but when I compare it to the colour illustrations in Heimbüchler, I notice first of all that the ears are quite wrong. Also, the left foot of the "P" of "PORTO" does not have the characteristics decribed by Heimbüchler - the left foot should be sloping away to the left.

The 81 Parale on the "Hamburger" fragment is more interesting. The paper is too blue - it's very pretty - but the design is quite good. I had to study for some time before I could pick out an obvious mistake: in the double oval around the "81", to the right (south east) side, there is a fine line of shading inside the double oval. I cannot see anything like this in Heimbüchler's illustrations. And, once again, the left foot of the "P" of "PORTO" does not slope away to the left

The real failure is perhaps the cancellation. Ignore the weak RECEPISSE. The WASLUI / MOLDOVA 28/8 in pale grey is not a plausible colour - and, I then discover, Heimbüchler actually lists this WASLUI 28/8 as a cancellation which appears on modern (1960s onwards) forgeries (page 217)

1 comment:

Regarding the color of the Moldavian postmarks, there are known in romanian archives specimens for almost every week, during the the usage of the first and the second issue of the Bull Heads. A comprehensive study about this was published by Romanian expert Kiriac Dragomir in "Filatelia" magazine.